Health hiccups in Tamil Nadu

Born and raised in Chennai, which he prefers to call 'Madras', Manikandan joined The Hindu in 1999 and is currently based in its office in Tambaram and covers the city's southern suburbs. Follow him o...
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Rapid urbanisation has led to a need for more primary health centres. The suburbs and extended areas especially, cry out for attention

The death of T. Sakthivel due to snakebite at his home in suburban Jalladanpettai near Tambaram has raised several questions about the public health system in Tamil Nadu.

The upgraded Primary Health Centre at Medavakkam was in the news as it was not able to help the boy when he was taken there early on Thursday. Incidentally, the PHC had received a national award for excellence in 2009. Later, from a meagre 6 deliveries in January 2007, it recorded 184 deliveries in October 2011, the highest among all PHCs in the State. The centre is also the ‘mother’ PHC for other health sub centres coming up within St. Thomas Mount Panchayat Union limits in the city’s southern suburbs. Experts note that if a model institution was not able to save a life, the scene at other health centres is likely to be bleak.

“They should have administered the vaccine even if they had only one vial. They should have tried to procure as many vials as possible from the nearest PHCs and transported the boy to Tambaram Taluk Government Hospital in Chromepet,” said S. Elango, former Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He said that Tamil Nadu, which was performing better than other States in indicators such as infant and maternal mortality rates and life expectancy was lagging in life saving indicators, the recent death of the boy bite being an example. He suggested the formation of a committee, 50 per cent of which would comprise public health experts, representatives of NGOs and advocates, to audit unnatural deaths.

Dr. Elango, who is also president of Tamil Nadu chapter of Public Health Foundation of India, said a team under the supervision of the Chief Minister or the Health Minister should make unannounced checks on PHCs across districts every three months for a realistic assessment of the situation.

The committee, with statutory powers, should be a fact-finding one that will make an assessment of the state of preparedness to deal with unexpected contingencies, instead of a punitive one, he added.

Private hospitals too at fault

Many residents also said that the reported refusal of a private hospital to treat the boy unless a heavy fee was paid was a common practice in many other such institutions. C. Priyadarshini, a homemaker in Nemilichery, said, “We once saw an accident victim brought to a private hospital. The injured man, a motorcycle rider, was semi-conscious and even in that state, while providing first aid, the hospital staff kept asking him if his relatives could afford the Rs. 3 lakh needed for treatment.”

It is very sad and deplorable to admit that, India is becoming a failed state in real sense, in spite of all the tall claims they are making about India, being incredible and shining. Imagin that, they could not even afford a timely treatment in one of its states, to a snake bite victim of 11 years,so he died. Where is India going? Ironically at every break of time, they used to advocate an unsolicited and Unworthy comparison of India with China, while totally ignoring the fact that India could never even be a distant follower, leave alone a match for instance, at this pace of developmement.

from:
Haja Abu Bucker

Posted on: Oct 16, 2013 at 01:22 IST

The physician at the first point of contact needs to be a generalist of high competence, if this kind of deficiencies in service are to be avoided. The state needs to recognize and promote the training of Family Physicians, at least to a diploma level and offer suitable incentives to that end. The physician-to-be needs to be exposed to this field at the undergraduate (UG) level itself. This in turn requires that every medical college should have a department and faculty of Family Medicine and access to primary/secondary level facilities (PHCs, CHCs and taluk/district hospitals) to train UG students in the FM approach. This again requires the promotion of postgraduate training in this field on a large scale. A policy decision on this issue is urgently needed.

from:
P. Zachariah

Posted on: Oct 15, 2013 at 22:29 IST

In India poor and middle class people very hard to get 100% satisfied medical treatment. It is our fate.